Why Is My Bitcoin Transaction Taking So Long?

Have you ever been in this situation before? You chose crypto as the payment method for a client or friend whom you wanted to receive payments from. You kept waiting for it to appear in your wallet after the person claimed to have sent it. 

Days turned into weeks, and weeks almost turned into a month and you couldn’t hold it anymore; you decided to ask for proof of payment and he/she provided it but the coin didn’t reflect in your wallet.

You decided to ask around and several things were explained to you only to realise that it’s not the fault of the two of you, It’s just what you didn’t know that’s causing issues.

Have you ever been sent a coin and it didn’t reflect immediately in your wallet as expected? various things might be responsible for it and some of them are:  

• Inputting the wrong crypto address: When trying to send crypto to someone (clients, friends, family), ensure you double-check if the crypto address you input is the right one. If you send your crypto to the wrong crypto address, it will definitely not appear in their wallet [s’ope otilo 😞 (it’s gone)]
  
  
• When a blockchain network experiences peak traffic:  Just like how your road is free on Sundays because there are fewer vehicles on the road (maybe because people are resting and not going to work), the same occurs when dealing with the blockchain network. When a blockchain network experiences peak traffic, it causes mempool congestion. 

The mempool is where all valid transactions wait to be confirmed by the Bitcoin network. A high number of transactions in the mempool indicates congested traffic which will result in longer average confirmation time and higher priority fees.

and there’s this particular one you need to pay more attention to

• Low gas fee: When there’s mempool congestion, miners prioritise transactions with higher gas fees. Processing $130 USD worth of BTC with a $1 gas fee (processing fee) will delay your transaction and can make it take weeks to get delivered to the recipient’s wallet. 
  

Instant payment is supposed to be one of the greatest things you need to enjoy while dealing with crypto. Take the above points into consideration and your Bitcoin transaction will have no reason to take long; even if it does, you won’t worry much about it.